A comprehensive exhibition of Yoko Ono‘s art, “Music of the Mind,” will open at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in October. The institution will display more than 200 pieces, covering a span of more than seven decades’ worth of work. These include photography, musical compositions, participatory instruction pieces, installations, and a curated music room, among several other highlights. London’s Tate Museum previously showed “Music of the Mind” last year and reported record turnouts.
Some of the notable works featured include Cut Piece (1964), which invited participants to cut off her clothing, piece by piece, as a statement on feminism; her influential book Grapefruit (1964); and the films Fly (1970 – ’71) and Film No. 4 (Bottoms) (1966 – ’67). Her musical collaborations with John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and John Lennon will also be available to hear. One of her recent Wish Tree installations, on which people write a wish and pin it to a tree — a creation she’s been planting consistently around the world since 1996 — will also be on display.
Participatory works include Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961/1966), Bag Piece (1964), and White Chess Set (1966). There’s also a boat on which visitors can write their hopes and beliefs, Add Color (Refugee Boat) (1960/2016); and My Mommy Is Beautiful (2004) a sounding board for people to praise their mothers in words and photo.
Ono, 92, moved to New York to study at Sarah Lawrence College in 1953. Three years later, she moved to Manhattan and became an instrumental part of the city’s avant-garde scene and Fluxus art movement. In 1966, she met John Lennon, marrying him three years later. The couple released a series of experimental albums in the late Sixties, and she issued her first solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, in 1970. She continued marking art, citing music as a force that kept her going after Lennon’s death, and her work has previously been the subject of exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Japan Society Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, and other institutions.
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In 2009, she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 53rd Venice Biennale, and last year, she was recognized with the Edward MacDowell Medal, another lifetime achievement recognition.
“We are thrilled to present ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’ here at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago — a celebration of Ono’s expansive practice which continues to challenge the boundaries of artist and audience,” Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn said in a statement. “This exhibition underscores the avant-garde and interdisciplinary roots that made the MCA what it is today — our first performance in 1967 featured Fluxus artists. We’re overjoyed to bring Ono’s work to the MCA, a museum that so truly aligns with her practice and overlaps with her history.”
